Obscured by Clouds. The rough and ready blog of a cloud benighted biologist and amateur astronomer. Astroblog will cover my interests in astronomy, biology and Life, the Universe and Everything.

Monday, March 25, 2013

Asteroid DA2013cl2 Does Not Exist, it Won't Hit Earth on the 25th (it's a Hoax)

Just reposting this article as there is is STILL a story circulating, allegedly from a Professor
Herbert Raymond Brown, that a 300 meter diameter asteroid called
DA2013cl2 will impact the Atlantic Ocean (or Canada or Mexico) on 25
March. This impact will allegedly kill millions first off, then
exterminate the rest of humanity later on.

This is a hoax. There are a number of ways you can tell it is a hoax.

1) The story is illustrated with a picture of comet C/2011 L4 PanSTARRS, not an asteroid.
2) It does not have a real asteroid name, asteroids that do not have
proper names (like 4 Vesta), are named year, alphabetical identifier,
numerical identifier (eg 2012 DA14). There's a 2013 CL2, but that comes
nowhere near us, there's a 2013 CL22, which has a 1/10,000,000 chance of
hitting us in 2064, but nothing that fits the hoax description.
3) A 300 meter asteroid impact would be serious, with an impact energy
of 1110 Mt or TNT, creating a crater 4.6 Km in diameter, but it's no
civilisation killer. The Cretaceous/Tertiary impactor that did in the
dinosaurs (at least in part) was around 10 Km in diameter.
4) Outside of the various posts promulgating this story, there is no astronomy Professor Herbert Raymond Brown. Yes, there is a Ryamond Brown who works in science communication and outreach at NASA, but he is not Professor Herbert Raymond Brown
5) There is no high risk asteroid of any sort in the asteroid hazard lists.

Asteroids and meteors and comets... I just read THE MYOSHI EFFECT, a funny novel, kind of Douglas Adams like, about an asteroid headed toward earth and what's happening now is straight out of it. Fiction and fact are getting mixed together...